The streaks are over for high school football power Naperville Central.
Gone is the 21-game DuPage Valley winning streak.
Gone is the chance at three consecutive outright conference titles.
And, with crosstown rival Naperville North’s 28-14 victory Friday night, gone is the dream unbeaten season for the No. 2 Redhawks.
“This is big for us,” said Naperville North coach Larry McKeon, whose team was coming off a disappointing loss to Wheaton-Warrenville South last week.
“We’ve broken a string of victories for them, we’re conference co-champs, and we’ll get a better seed for the playoffs.”
Before the packed house of nearly 6,000 at North, Huskies quarterback Kevin Kobe passed for one touchdown and ran for another.
“A loss would’ve killed us,” said Kobe, who was 6 for 11 for 72 yards. “Our offensive line just did a great job.”
And he had words of praise for Doug Clark, coming back after missing eight games with an injury.
“Clark came back, hit holes fast and ran hard,” said Kobe of the 180-pound senior, who rushed for 104 yards on 14 carries and a touchdown.
Naperville Central is 8-1, 6-1 in the DVC.
No. 20 North ran its record to 7-2, 6-1.
North wasted little time getting in gear Friday.
On a nine-play, 78-yard opening drive, the Huskies never passed. Chris Brown’s 35-yard run (he had 100 yards on 14 carries) pushed the ball into Central territory.
Five plays later, Clark’s 16-yard run got the ball to the Central 2.
Clark finished the drive with a 1-yard run with 8 minutes 10 seconds left in the first quarter.
Brian Plackett’s extra point–he was perfect this evening–gave North a 7-0 lead.
The rest of the half was scoreless, thanks to the Huskies’ defense. Central drove to the North 9-yard line in the second quarter. But D.J. Johnson, who finished with 86 yards on 18 carries, was tackled for a 4-yard loss by Rob Koranda. On the next play, North’s 6-foot-3-inch, 225-pound Mike Szymanski stripped quarterback Christian Pearson of the ball and recovered it on the North 13 with 7:58 left in the half.
Central took the opening kickoff in the second half and used 16 plays to cover 73 yards before Pearson’s 4-yard TD pass to Jay Wilkey. That tied the game 7-7.
But North scored on its next possession–a 12-yard touchdown pass from Kobe to Jeff Recht for a 14-7 lead–and never trailed thereafter, though Nick Tolbert’s 90-yard kickoff return with 4:03 left in the game enabled Central to close to 21-14 before Brown tallied from 4 yards out with 1:50 left.
“They played an outstanding game,” Central coach Joe Bunge said of his neighbors. “They did everything right.”
